IRAN, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY

There are a number of related velvets which are generally dated to the later Safavid period, each of which has rows of figures, usually arranged in symmetrical groups. Two are in the Keir Collection (Friedrich Spuhler, Islamic Carpets and Textiles in the Keir Collection, London, 1978, nos.112 and 114. Common to both is a kneeling man playing a pipe, which is also found, but here mirrored, on our velvet. The other figure on the second of the two Keir velvets is a kneeling man in a round cap holding what looks suspiciously like a large first-generation mobile phone to his ear, very similar to the second of the figures here. This series of velvets appears to play with a relatively small number of motifs, but arranges them in different ways. The present example makes more of the pairing than most of the others in the group. A further example, again another variant on the theme, was sold at Sotheby's New York 14 December 1995, lot 107. A velvet that at one stage was in the Kelekian collection provides an earlier version of the design (Arthur Upham Pope, A Survey of Persian Art, Oxford, 1938, pl.1038a). Scattered with staggered figures and trees, including the kneeling piper and the mobile phone user, it shows how the present very formalised design had its roots in a different earlier aesthetic.